


we can't be heroes if all we do is struggle to avoid defeat

by enmity



Category: Tales of Legendia, Tales of Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, F/M, Gen, bleak and highly whack XD, self care is admitting this is walfen :(
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-08-25 00:56:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16651222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enmity/pseuds/enmity
Summary: There is a girl in the cage, small and shadowed.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> (stressed hand gestures) help me
> 
> AU where fenimore is a successful artificial merines. is this compliant/does it make sense? idk leave me alone
> 
> edit: i give up, this is walfen but it's okay because if walfen happens the apocalypse does too

There is a girl in the cage, small and shadowed.

He has to wait for her shoulders to still before she recognizes the blonde hair and blue eyes, before the terror in her face starts to dim—he isn’t an enemy. Walter knocks twice at the bars holding her captive, and the sound echoes back hollow as he pulls out the key he filched from the soldier he’d killed, and undoes the lock.

“Thank you,” she says, and gives her name in exchange for his.

Her wrist is bony and pale, and he has to look away from the scars fading under her sleeve. He pulls her to standing and searches around the cell, empty except for them and the ghosts of their comrades, and doesn’t hide his disappointment when he asks, “Where’s the Merines? Did they take her?”

The girl steps back, shaking her head. “No,” Fenimore says. “And wherever she is, they aren’t looking.”

“What do you mean? She’s the Merines. They always are.”

Her laughter is stale. “You’ve got the wrong idea. They’ve given up on her.”

Orerines footsteps approach from the distance, and he starts to drag her, the time for questions having run out. They watch the soldiers shrink as his Teriques carries them higher into the sky, and once the tension has settled some Walter squints at her and asks gravely, “She’s not dead, is she?”

“Who?”

“The Merines.”

“I don’t know.” She grits her teeth. “Look, it doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Why?”

“Because the experiments were a success,” she says. “I’m sure you understand what that means.”

She smiles bitterly when his eyes widen, because he does.

—

He slides the plate towards her. She looks like she hasn’t eaten in days, and for all he knows it might be true. Fenimore sits up rigidly, accepting the meal with her usual reluctance, and he tries not to place needless significance in the careful way she cuts her food, as if trying to savor every bite.

“Are you going home?” Walter asks.

For a moment, she looks wistful. “With a war on the horizon? I don’t think so.”  

“Then,” he says, voice even, “what are you planning to do?”

Fenimore shrugs ruefully, “Who knows? I have to start pulling my weight. I might be a fake, but being a Merines should count for something, right?”

“At least you acknowledge it,” he doesn’t say, and offers to change her bandages instead.

—

When he stood that day on the beach and watched the boats closing in on the horizon, he’d hoped. He stood, waiting the same way he had for the past three years, but no boat neared towards the shore and no storm came to wash one away, and neither did she.

He stood there for a very long time regardless.

“I thought I might be able to see her again.”

He doesn’t quite know why he admits it, and regrets the decision immediately when Fenimore rewards him with a scowl, turning her back to him as she prepares another meal for the soldiers.

“So you’ve got the wrong person. So I’m not your Merines—get over it already.”

“Of course you aren’t,” he says wearily, instead of _I know_ , or _I never pretended you were_ , even though it’s true. Even though no one could ever replace her. The girl he failed to save as the soldiers descended upon the village and fed the soil with the ashes of his people. The girl he’ll never see again, Walter realizes, because hope can only endure so long, and it’s not as if he’s ever been an optimist.

“Then stop pitying yourself,” Fenimore snaps, and turns around suddenly, eyes narrowed and bright and chin turned up fiercely towards him. “Listen to me. They’ve stopped chasing her. I don’t believe she’s dead. I was in that cell for a reason; if they killed the real Merines, I would have known. And let’s put it this way—if we… if _you_ win this war, doesn’t that mean she’ll be able to live in peace? If you really love her, won’t knowing that she can live happily be enough for you?”

He doesn’t answer. Instead he sighs, and tells her that maybe he doesn’t need some scrawny little girl to lecture him about big, heavy words like _love_ , and where does she get off on using such a word so flippantly, as if she understands? As if a single word could condense three years’ worth of regret so neatly.

As if it’s that easy.

He slinks away as she steeps in righteous indignation, and spends the rest of the afternoon repairing the automata (pretending her words don’t sting).

—

So it is time.

He stands one step behind her, and stares intently at the polished floor, because if he looks anywhere else he fears it might start to hurt. Because there is the Merines in her night-black dress and hair pulled down, and ahead of them is the golden throne, awaiting her like salvation, like annihilation—like everything that’s been building up for four millennia, and there is no time for sentiments when they’re fighting a war and losing fast, and the girl in front of him is their only hope _isn’t her_ but that’s not supposed to matter, is it?

And Fenimore turns to face him, shoulders trembling.

He looks straight ahead.

“Merines. Is something wrong?”

Her smile stops long before it reaches her eyes. If he blinks he knows it’ll disappear, swallowed by a terror that has never truly gone away, so he tries not to. He supposes he owes her at least that.

“You don’t have to force yourself to call me that, you know. Jeez, you’re such a tryhard.”

“What do you want from me,” he says, and it doesn’t sound like a question, just tired. This time he does blink, because _honestly, you looked better with your hair tied; whoever decided this suited you?_ “Fenimore?”

Wrong. All wrong.

She takes a step, as if there’s anyone else to hear, and the sound echoes back hollow against the golden walls, extending further and further up into the ceiling, a darkness not much unlike the cage he freed her from. “I don’t want us to suffer anymore," she admits, and there is the weight of millions dead in her voice, on her set of bony, quivering shoulders, “I just want it to be over. And if it has to be me, then… so be it.”

“I’ll make sure you’ll see it through,” he says instead of anything else, because he has as much to offer her as she does him: nothing. “It’s my duty.”

Fenimore laughs helplessly, “Don’t talk to me about duty, you obviously liked her,” but when he holds her hand steady as she steps towards the throne, she doesn’t protest.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Speaking of which; if you’re going to insist on calling me that, at least try not to grimace while you do it. At least, not worse than your usual face. It’s unsightly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2nd fanfic of the year is walfen? more likely than you think
> 
> i liked the final scene of the previous ch so this is another take on it ><

The throne suited her about as well as the garments did. Fenimore’s hair hung untied over her shoulders, and she felt keenly now the odd weight of it, how it brushed her sides as she’d sat watching her reflection, a nameless pair of hands sorting out the tangles with a hairbrush and another securing the pins keeping the headpiece on straight. Too heavy, too flowery. She’d sighed at her own unsmiling visage and left it at that.

Fake Merines or no, she’d been within her rights to complain. But the sting on her scalp had lasted only a moment, and the inclination to endure that had allowed her to withstand capture severed whatever urge she might’ve had to squirm or whine. So instead she’d kept her jaw set, and wondered whether she’d gone long enough that by the time news inevitably reached her sister, the blow would’ve softened some. Thyra would understand, or so she hoped. Failing that, she would have to learn.

Grief was no stranger to either of them anyhow.  _Better die for a purpose than none at all,_ she’d told herself, thinking of home and her parents and the ashen bones that remained of both, and though the words had served a tepid enough comfort then, they did nothing to quell the shaking in her core now as she walked herself past the viewing chamber, one hallway closer to her destination at a time. The sounds of fighting dulled with each step she took deeper into the palace. The screams faded first; soon she only had the clatter of metal and intermittent thump of something hitting the ground to go by. He was an efficient hitman, if nothing else. 

Walter returned shortly after she’d settled into an uneasy position on the throne, her ankles tucked and back as straight as the rods she could still imagine being waved in her vicinity through the bars, another way for the soldiers to taunt her when denying food lost its novelty. Trading one show of discomfort for another, Fenimore felt her grimace dissipate at the same time her chest constricted, and tried not to appreciate that at least he remembered to look her in the eyes this time.

For all the years devoted to mold him into the perfect soldier not a second had been spent into teaching him the slightest of manners. Except, of course, when it came to bowing at the waist in front of her as he delivered his reports—a gesture she found nothing short of ridiculous, but which Walter insisted on doing every time.

“Rest easy, Merines. I’ve pushed the troops back for the time being.”

“You’re the one who should be resting. Don’t kid yourself; ‘for the time being.’ You won’t be calm until you’ve personally killed the entire army, will you?”

“At the rate they’re at, I might. Certainly nobody expected Vaclav’s backup plan to backfire on them like this. They’re doing everything they can to take you back.”

“You say that like I should be flattered. They must really be out of options if they’ve stopped tracking the  _real_  Merines down,” she said. “Speaking of which; if you’re going to insist on calling me that, at least try not to grimace while you do it. At least, not worse than your usual face. It’s unsightly.”

“They’re not stupid. And neither is she. She must be too far away by now.” He bristled obviously, sidestepping her remark in a way that a month ago would’ve inclined Fenimore to laugh. Pushing Walter had been fun, until she’d learned to tell his expressions apart. Then it just made her feel bad—and he had enough self-pity to cover himself on that front, in any case. She rather disliked the prospect of feeling sorry for him. “We’re counting on you for a reason, after all.”

Though she wouldn’t admit it, the face he made when he thought about the past felt like a bitter reflection of her own. Sometimes it was her who found it hard to look at him. Fenimore rolled her wrist, palm clenched to grasp an invisible something. “I know."

The coincidence that had allowed her to be spared was not a lucky one. She remembered the days she’d spent, shuffled from one cage to another; if not a cell then it was tubes hooking her up to something gargantuan and whirring, and after a particularly grueling examination she’d spent the following week too weak to even be wheeled in and out the lab. She considered it a miracle she’d recovered before they could consider her expendable. Her body’s compatibility with the experiments had not saved her from death, as she would later learn. It had only postponed it.

She tried to take comfort in the fact that at least this way her death would have meaning. That was more than what could be said for so many others.

“You’re still hesitating,” he said. “As head of the Merines’ guard, I can only ensure your safety. Please understand that.”

 _You should take my place then_ , was what she'd wanted to say. Had almost said, really. He could wave his duty and rank in front of her as much as he liked and it wouldn't make a difference. But something held her tongue and she blinked, murmured, “I-I apologize. I just need a little more time- I don’t want to mess anything up.”

Walter looked away. “I… I understand.”

Fenimore consoled herself by imagining he’d meant to say something far more acerbic and biting. “So you've finally caught up.” She frowned and set her face in her hands, watching the floor and the way light played across the glistening tiles. Realization sunk into her, deep and heavy as a stone, but her head felt light. This could be the last beautiful thing she would ever get to see. “Did he tell you? I can’t believe you didn’t know all this time.”

“I didn’t,” Walter said.

It was the duty of the guard to be by the Merines’ side as she proceeded with the ritual and everything it entailed. Fenimore told herself that was why he didn’t excuse himself right then and there. Not even she trusted herself to face her fate with half the grace she carried now. 

_Shouldn’t you look happier? Shouldn’t you be glad it wasn’t her who was going to die?_

“Aren’t you glad it was me?” she wanted to ask—but it didn’t seem like a question he could answer.

So the silence spoke for them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wonder if walter knew that becoming the merines means death for shirley... i initially thought he did & just didn't address this bc massive cognitive dissonance but i think it adds like an extra layer of tragedy + his actions make more sense if he didn't. 
> 
> ofc in this AU everything goes ~right + fenimore hates the orerines already + seemed like the sacrifical type so there's no need for maurits to keep secrets or pretend to be friendly. he'd be like "how admirable of fenimore to accept her demise 4 the sake of our race" and walter overhears this and like "demise???"


End file.
